Health Care Reform Articles - February 7, 2012

Critics say hospitals cherry pick best-paying patients

When the oversized postcard arrived last August from Provena St. Joseph Medical Center promoting a lung cancer screening for current or former smokers over 55, Steven Boyd wondered how the hospital had found him.

http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2012/February/06/Hospitals-Mine-Patient-Records.aspx

The Battle for Vermont’s Health

By Wendell Potter

You can’t see them. They’re hidden from view and probably always will be. But the health insurance industry’s big guns are in place and pointed directly at the citizens of Vermont.

Health insurers were not able to stop the state’s drive last year toward a single-payer health care system, which insurers have spent millions to scare Americans into believing would be the worst thing ever. Despite the ceaseless spin, Vermont lawmakers last May demonstrated they could not be bought nor intimidated when they became the first in the nation to pass a bill that will probably establish a single-payer beachhead in the U.S.

http://www.nationofchange.org/print/5891

Medicare Advantage Premiums Drop an Average of 7% and Enrollment up 10%—That Must Make Republicans Just Want to Cry

Medicare Advantage would appear to be a fantastic success—senior premiums are dropping and enrollment is increasing.

Listening to Health and Human Services Secretary Sebelius last week, you would think private Medicare plans were a Democratic idea and this is their success. Many industry observers, including me, have worried that Medicare Advantage benefits would shrink and premiums would rise because the new health care law reduced federal payments to the plans by $136 billion over the next decade.
http://healthpolicyandmarket.blogspot.com/2012/02/medicare-advantage-premiums-drop.html

LePage blasts lawmakers again on DHHS budget - Maine news, sports, obituaries, weather - Bangor Daily News

AUGUSTA, Maine — Gov. Paul LePage, in his strongest words to date, criticized lawmakers Monday for drastically altering his initial budget proposal to cut $220 million from the Department of Health and Human Services and for putting forward a new plan “full of gimmicks and built on false savings.”
“Quite frankly, I believe this represents an abdication of their responsibility to the Maine people,” LePage said in a Monday afternoon press conference, his second in less than a week. “This is the exact same approach the Legislature has taken for the past 40 years and it hasn’t worked yet.”
http://bangordailynews.com/2012/02/06/politics/lepage-blasts-lawmakers-again-on-dhhs-budget/print/